IN SHORT: NONFICTION

By DAVID WALTON

Published: June 18, 1995

PSYCHO Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. By Janet Leigh with Christopher Nickens. Harmony, $22.

Janet Leigh appears in only about a third of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." But her status as the nominal star of the 1960 movie, and what seems like an endless store of amiability, have given her access to others involved in the production, and their interviews and reminiscences have been collected in "Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller," written with Christopher Nickens. "It's true that I don't take showers," Ms. Leigh writes. Her co-star, Anthony Perkins, was even more indelibly marked by the film, though Ms. Leigh writes that he accepted with good grace being typecast as a twitchy psychopath. She also recounts a hilarious anecdote about Perkins hiding outside a theater in Paris where "Psycho" was playing and leaping out at departing moviegoers. Mr. Nickens, whose previous books include biographies of Bette Davis and Natalie Wood, contributes an effective summary of the film's production history as well as a structure for Ms. Leigh's pleasing but sometimes meandering narrative. DAVID WALTON